I’ve been holding off on posting this for a minute, but with the release of Sinners the other weekend, it feels like the perfect time to talk about one of Mississippi’s most interesting folktales involving a legendary blues guitarist, a crossroad, and the Devil.
(If you have not seen Sinners yet, I highly recommend you drop what you are doing at this very moment and watch it. It’s easily one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time, and it’s so much more than a vampire film. I won’t spoil it for you, but I will say it’s a beautiful film and Ryan Coogler gives a masterclass on the Southern Gothic, exploring horrors, both real and supernatural, within the American South.)
It’s been interesting to see the rhetoric around Johnson post-Sinners, which bases some of its lore loosely around Johnson’s story. A lot of people know the popular version of his story that involves a deal with the Devil, but they don’t seem to know who Johnson was as a person or the weight of his contribution to music.
So, if you’ll join me, I’d like to tell you a little bit about Robert Johnson, both the myth and the man.
Now, let’s dive into the weeds of some good old American folklore.
One of my favorite American folktales takes place deep in the South, at a crossroads on the outskirts of Clarksdale, Mississippi, where a young man by the name of Robert Johnson allegedly sold his soul to become one of the greatest musicians of all time.
Robert Johnson (circa 1936)
Maybe you don’t know Johnson by name, but you’ve felt his influence on music.
He’s the father of the rock genre and his work has influenced some of the greatest guitarists of all time.
Without getting too deep into music history, Johnson is credited (though not as loudly as he should be) with developing a unique style of picking and introducing the “solo break” or guitar solo that would become a foundational part of rock music.
Some of the most famous musicians, such as Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, Jimi Hendrix, Robert Plant, and Eric Clapton, have all credited Johnson as an inspiration. In particular, Led Zeppelin guitarist, Robert Plant’s, love of Johnson and the raw sound of the Delta Blues would become the foundation for what we now refer to as the heavy metal genre.
(That’s right, without Robert Johnson we wouldn’t have Stairway to Heaven or the 50 other songs Led Zeppelin wrote about Lord of the Rings. Those guys were some serious Tolkien fans.)
Yet, as influential as Johnson was, his brief career spanned only a few years and he’s primarily remembered as the guitarist who made a deal with the Devil.
So, who was Robert Johnson?
Did he really sell his soul to become a blues legend who would leave an indelible mark on music?
I can’t tell you for sure, but what I can say is that Robert Johnson's life is one mired in folklore, and over the years facts have become convoluted with fiction. There are two versions of Robert Johnson: the myth and the man who lived a life surrounded by tragedy.
First, let me tell you about the myth.
According to lore, Robert Johnson was a down on his luck, womanizer who couldn't strum a chord. However, despite his musical deficiency, he dreamt of becoming a famous blues musician, who often told those around him, he'd do anything to achieve his dream (except practice, I guess).
In the early 1930s, Johnson worked as a sharecropper on a plantation in Mississippi.
For those of you unfamiliar with sharecropping in the American South, sharecropping is like renting an apartment with the addition of manual labor. Basically, individuals would rent farmland and equipment from a landowner in exchange for a portion of their yield.
And while that might sound reasonable in theory, this structure was intended to provide former plantation owners with cheap labor by keeping sharecroppers (many of whom were formerly enslaved) in a cycle of debt by limiting their ability to actually earn a living.
Sharecroppers were usually pushed to use “credits” from landowners to pay for everyday things. These credits were basically high interest loans that kept families in a cycle of poverty.
One day, while Johnson was lamenting his lack of talent, he was overheard by an older sharecropper on the plantation. The older man said that if Johnson was serious about giving anything for his dream, he should take his guitar down to the crossroads outside Clarksdale and wait until midnight for a man to appear.
The older man said was rumored that, for the right price, this mystery man could make your wildest dreams a reality.
So, Johnson, figuring he had nothing to lose, took his guitar down to the crossroads at the intersection of Route 49 and 61, and waited for midnight.
Photo courtesy of Clarksdale, MS.
But, midnight came and went, and there was no sign of any man who could grant wishes. Johnson felt duped by the old man, who had clearly played a prank on him.
It was late and unseasonably cold, and Johnson was tired after a long day in the fields. Knowing he still had a long hike home and only a few hours before he had to start work, he gathered his things and began walking back down the road.
Has your guitar been tuned?
Johnson jumped at the voice that seemingly came out of nowhere and turned to find a tall, dark, sharply dressed man standing at the center of the crossroads.
The man reached his hand out and repeated his question: Has your guitar been tuned?
Cautiously, Johnson shook his head and handed over his guitar. The man took it gingerly and went to work tuning the instrument. When he was done, he strummed a few chords and held it out for Johnson to take back.
Johnson reached for the guitar, but the man cautioned him to only take the instrument back if he was willing to make a trade. Apologizing, Johnson said he wasn’t aware he needed to bring money, and told the man he didn’t have much in the way of cash, but he was willing to do whatever it took for the man to help him.
The stranger smiled and said as long as Johnson was willing to do anything, he could help him. He held out the guitar again and asked if Johnson would play him something.
Johnson wasn’t expecting a late-night guitar lesson but decided to oblige the helpful stranger. To his surprise, his fingers moved effortlessly over the strings. He wasn’t stumbling over chords; he was actually playing…and he was good.
Incredulous at his sudden talent, Johnson went to ask the stranger what he’d done to the guitar, but the man was gone and Johnson was alone in the night.
The following morning Robert Johnson returned home with his guitar and began to play for family and friends. Everyone was so shocked by Johnson’s sudden mastery over the instrument and the haunting music he created, and they began to wonder if there was something supernatural behind it.
Johnson started playing in local clubs and eventually began to tour, charming crowds and developing a new sound that would eventually land him a record deal. After so many years, he’d almost forgotten about that strange night at the crossroads and the man who’d vanished almost as soon as he’d appeared; it felt as peculiar and distant as a dream.
But while Johnson might have buried the memory, the Devil rarely forgets those whose ledgers are in the red.
While Johnson was in the midst of recording twenty-nine songs for the American Record Corporation in 1936, feeling like he was finally living his dream, he began to feel as though he was being followed.
Large black dogs began to hang around the juke joints he played at, and several times Johnson swore he saw the well-dressed stranger in the crowd, watching him as though he was waiting for something.
It was around this time Johnson realized that night at the crossroads wasn’t a fever dream. He’d made a deal that night with someone or something, but he’d never bothered to ask the price.
Then, seven short months after Johnson finished his recordings, the Devil came down to a juke joint in Greenwood, Mississippi to collect payment.
So, what was the price of talent and eternal fame?
It was Johnson’s soul.
That night, as Johnson was casually flirting with a married woman to get a free drink, her husband, compelled by an almost supernatural force, poured poison into a bottle of whiskey and had his wife give it to Johnson.
Johnson drank the whole bottle himself that night, and some say, that when he started feeling strange, he noticed a tall, well-dressed stranger in the corner, who raised a glass to Johnson before vanishing into the night.
Three excruciating days later, on August 16, 1938, Johnson would become the founding member of the Twenty-Seven Club, leaving behind a slew of unanswered questions as to how a man on top of his game could die so strangely and so suddenly.
So, did the Devil really come for Robert Johnson?
Keen listeners of Johnson’s music would say that he left clues about what was going to happen to him in his lyrics.
Though he never explicitly discusses a deal with the Devil, Crossroad Blues is often cited as Johnson confirming the crossroads myth:
I went to the crossroad, fell down on my knees
I went to the crossroad, fell down on my knees
Asked the Lord above, "Have mercy, save poor Bob if you please"
Mmmm, standin' at the crossroad, I tried to flag a ride
Standin' at the crossroad, I tried to flag a ride
Didn't nobody seem to know me, everybody pass me by
Mmmm, the sun goin' down boy, dark goin' catch me here
Oooo ooee eeee, boy dark goin' catch me here
I haven't got no lovin' sweet woman that love and feel my care
You can run, you can run, tell my friend boy Willie Brown
You can run, tell my friend boy Willie Brown
Lord that I'm standing at the crossroad, babe
I believe I'm sinkin' down
The song itself is peculiar.
In it, Johnson begins by asking God to have mercy on him and save him, but from what?
Then in the second verse Johnson switches it up. He’s no longer looking for salvation; he’s at the crossroads trying to flag down a ride. We don’t know where he’s going, but we’re given the impression time is running out and no one is willing to help him.
He briefly laments that there’s no woman who will feel the loss of his love, and then things get strange.
There are a few interpretations of the ending to Crossroad Blues:
One is that Johnson is giving his friend a warning that you can run from things but it all catches up to you in the end. Another interpretation is that he’s asking someone to run notify his friend that he’s dying. But for some, the lyrics seem to indicate Johnson wants to tell his friend that he’s tried to run from his fate, but it’s too late and he feels the Devil dragging him down to hell.
It’s easy to see how over the years people interpreted the song as proof Johnson made a deal at the crossroads, especially when you look at the other songs he made with similar references to being pursued by the Devil.
In Hellhound on my Trail, Johnson talks about being pursued by Hellhounds and having to keep endlessly moving, despite his lover trying to protect him with “hot foot powder”.
I got to keep movin', I got to keep movin'
Blues fallin' down like hail, blues fallin' down like hail
Hmm-mmm, blues fallin' down like hail, blues fallin' down like hail
And the days keeps on worryin' me
There's a hellhound on my trail, hellhound on my trail
Hellhound on my trail
If today was Christmas Eve, if today was Christmas Eve
And tomorrow was Christmas Day
If today was Christmas Eve, and tomorrow was Christmas Day
Aw, wouldn't we have a time, baby?
All I would need my little sweet rider just
To pass the time away, huh-huh
To pass the time away
You sprinkled hot foot powder, mmm
Mmm, around my door, all around my door
You sprinkled hot foot powder
All around your daddy's door, hmm-hmm-hmm
It keep me with ramblin' mind, rider
Every old place I go, every old place I go
I can tell the wind is risin', the leaves tremblin' on the tree
Tremblin' on the tree
I can tell the wind is risin', leaves tremblin' on the tree
Hmm-hmm, hmm-mmm
All I need's my little sweet woman
And to keep my company, hey, hey, hey
My company
Hot foot powder is a blend that can contain cayenne pepper, chili powder, and salt, sometimes, sulfur, wasps nests, and/or graveyard dirt, that is used by Hoodoo practitioners to repel negative people and entities.
In folklore, Hellhounds are a type of death omen. Sometimes they appear as a sign someone is about to die, and in other myths they collect souls. So for some, the implication here is that Johnson is aware the Devil is coming to collect and there’s nothing can save him.
Johnson was also well known as a sort of vagrant musician, and this song seemed to confirm why he was constantly moving, never staying in one place for too long.
The last song people tend to flag is Me and the Devil Blues:
Early this morning
When you knocked upon my door
Early this morning ooh
When you knocked upon my door
And I said, "Hello Satan"
"I believe it's time to go"
Me and the Devil
Was walkin' side by side
Me and the Devil, ooh
Was walkin' side by side
And I'm going to beat my woman
Until I get satisfied
She said you don't see why
That I would dog her 'round
Now baby, you know you ain't doin' me right don't ya?
She say, "You don't see why", ooh
That I would dog her 'round
It must-a be that old evil spirit
So deep down in the ground
You may bury my body
Down by the highway side
Baby, I don't care where you bury my body when I'm dead and gone
You may bury my body, ooh
Down by the highway side
So my old evil spirit
Can get a Greyhound bus and ride
In this song, Johnson sings about the Devil literally showing up at his door. He attributes the Devil as the reason he’s mistreated and abused his lover, and ends the song by saying he doesn’t care where she buries him when he’s gone, but then tells her she can bury him by the highway (perhaps near a crossroad?).
Now, it behooves me to say that Johnson could have been alluding to less supernatural evils like hardship, loneliness, or the impact of racial oppression. He also may have simply been a great storyteller, weaving pieces of the rumors surrounding him into his act. But, there are still some who see these songs as Johnson telling listeners that the crossroads story is true and ever since he struck a deal, the Devil has been waiting in the wings to collect his payment.
And listen, I get it, the whole thing makes for a very good story, especially when you consider the implication of Johnson being considered the “founding member” of the Twenty-Seven Club.
If you’re unfamiliar with the Twenty-Seven Club, it’s an urban legend that picked up steam after the death of Kurt Cobain. Basically, it’s the belief that truly talented, famous people seem to mysteriously die in tragic ways at twenty-seven. Besides Robert Johnson and Kurt Cobain, other members of the “club” include Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Amy Winehouse.
There’s no statistical proof that twenty-seven is some magic death sentence for talented artists (or that there’s an entity with a penchant for music that only makes deals with twenty-year-olds who want to be famous). It’s actually statistically more likely for musicians to die at the age of fifty-six as opposed to twenty-seven.
The myth of the “club” also doesn’t account for the potential dangers of increased access to alcohol and drugs or pre-existing mental health issues, which can be exacerbated by substance abuse.
Of the names previously mentioned, Cobain and Winehouse were formally diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and Hendrix, Joplin, Basquiat, and Morrison, while never formally diagnosed, were believed to have struggled with a mood disorder. All of the above, Johnson included, struggled with substance abuse and admitted to using alcohol and/or drugs to cope with feelings of depression or anxiety.
All of this to say, the high cost of fame likely isn’t your soul at the age of twenty-seven; it’s your mental health. Being forced to turn it on night after night and perform, while constantly traveling and leaving your support system behind would be challenging for anyone, especially when the media is constantly picking apart your life or circulating rumors.
But, stories like the lore surrounding Robert Johnson and the death of Kurt Cobain continue to fuel the myth that there is a price that must be paid for talent.
The folklore that surrounds Robert Johnson is fascinating, but it also erases the achievements and struggles that made him an artist whose impact can still be felt in music even today.
So, what's the real story?
The truth is we don't really know a lot about Robert Johnson's life, even some of the dates I’m going to share are estimates based on what researchers have been able to recover from the time, which is why it’s so easy to fill in the blanks with folklore, but we do know there are a lot of misconceptions that come from a variety of sources.
Johnson may have had a few too many ladies on his dance card and liked to drink to excess, but he wasn't a lazy sharecropper who refused to put in the work to be famous. Johnson was a fairly well-educated young man whose father was a prominent businessman in Hazelhurst, Mississippi.
And his story, though not as fantastical, is worth hearing.
Our story begins with Robert’s parents: Charles and Julia Majors Dodds.
Charles and Julia had been married for nearly two decades and had several children together (before Robert), but one night in 1910, Charles was forced to abandon his family in order to flee a lynch mob in the middle of the night, disguised as a woman.
Now, the formal reason Charles was being chased was supposedly over a financial dispute with his landlord; however, the full story is that Charles had been having an affair with a young woman in town, and this same young woman was also sleeping with another local businessman named Joseph Marchetti.
When Marchetti discovered he and Dodds shared a mistress, he rounded up some family members and went to “teach Dodds a lesson”.
So, Charles Dodds escaped to Tennessee, and his wife, Julia, opted to stay behind. Unsurprisingly, she was not quite thrilled that her husband was cheating on her.
Charles and Julia would eventually divorce, but shortly after Charles departed Mississippi, Julia began her own affair with a married man named Noah Johnson, which resulted in a pregnancy.
It's unclear if Julia fudged the truth and told Charles that Robert was his biological son or if she merely asked him to do her a solid after everything he put her through, but on May 8, 1911, Robert Leroy Dodds was born and Charles was listed as the father on his birth certificate.
Around the time Robert was two, his mother sent him to live with Charles in Memphis, where Johnson would spend his formative years attending school and soaking up the variety of musical styles in the Memphis music scene.
Robert enjoyed his time in Memphis, but he also longed for a connection with his mother, who he hadn’t seen in years.
While Robert was away in Tennessee, Julia met a sharecropper named Will "Dusty" Willis who was more than twenty years her junior. The two married and led a somewhat transient life. Willis was a poor sharecropper who traveled around to different plantations, taking work where he could, and Julia went with him.
Newly remarried, Julia felt stable enough to invite Robert to live with her, even part of the time.
We don't know much about Johnson's life during this period, but we do know that the family initially lived in Arkansas before moving to the Abbay and Leatherman plantation in Mississippi and that this time period would be Robert’s first real exposure to the harsh realities of sharecropping.
From what historians have been able to discover, it seems that Robert’s mother enrolled him in school for at least a year at the Indian Creek School in Commerce, Mississippi. Contemporaneous accounts from school friends indicate that Robert would be gone for long stretches of time and it was presumed he was going back and forth between Tennessee and Mississippi.
During this period of his life, he began to become more proficient at different instruments such as the harmonica and pump organ. Sometime in 1927, Robert began to learn the guitar and by 1928 he began traveling to different cities to play with other musicians and started to spend more time again in Memphis with his father, Charles Dodds, and his second wife, Molly.
It was around this time two major things happened in Johnson's life:
1. His mother finally revealed the truth about Robert's biological father, and he officially changed his name to Robert Johnson.
2. A seventeen-year-old Johnson met fourteen-year-old Virginia Travis in 1929. The two quickly eloped, and historians believe they potentially lied about their respective ages in order to obtain a marriage certificate
We don't know much about Johnson's first wife, but the marriage would be short-lived.
Soon after the elopement Virginia fell pregnant and Johnson was forced to reconsider his dreams of becoming a traveling musician.
Johnson realized there was no way he could support a family as a struggling artist, so decided to give up his dreams and settle down somewhere he could make an honest living. So, he reached out to his elder half-sister, Bessie, to see if she could find him work on the plantation where she and her husband lived.
So, Johnson and Virginia moved to Tunica, Mississippi, and he began work as a sharecropper.
And here is where the rumors about Johnson’s life begin to form.
There are plenty of stories about Johnson being a lazy, womanizer, but the truth is Johnson was a fine worker; he was just unable to fully give up the blues. Sometimes he would sneak off to practice, and eventually, he started using nights and days off to travel to local juke joints and play.
But, the occasional evening out started turning into weekends, and soon Johnson was missing for long periods of time, which didn’t exactly sit well with Virginia.
We don’t know if Virginia had a negative view of the blues, though we know her family found secular music to be evil in nature. However, whether or not Virginia supported Robert’s passion for music, his frequent travels put a strain on an already difficult pregnancy.
So, increasingly ill and tired of waiting around, Virginia left Tunica to have her baby at her familial home.
The day she left Tunica would be the last time Johnson would ever see his wife. In April of 1930, Virginia died from complications due to childbirth, and her child died with her.
Virginia’s family refused to have Johnson at her funeral and waited until after she was buried to inform Johnson of her passing.
When Johnson eventually arrived at Virginia’s familial home, he received a cold reception from her friends and family who openly blamed him for her death, and claimed it was his obsession with secular music and pursuit of a “godless lifestyle” that brought evil into their daughter’s life.
This encounter is where rumors of Johnson's affiliation with the Devil seem to begin.
Now, it's important to note that Johnson never denied these rumors, and almost adopted them as part of his personal lore, perhaps partially out of guilt and partially because it added an air of mystery to his story.
Johnson never spoke openly about the loss of his wife and child, but in the aftermath of Virginia’s death, he makes two major decisions that will alter the course of his life.
First, he commits himself to the blues, playing shows in the Robinsonville area and sharing the stage with a few members of famous Delta Blues singer, Son House's, family members, which will be important later.
Second, Johnson decides to track down his biological father.
Johnson never finds his biological father, but on his journey to track him down, he stumbles upon famous blues guitarist, Isaiah "Ike" Zimmerman.
For those of you unfamiliar with blues lore, Zimmerman had his own “mysterious” origin story. Allegedly, he learned the guitar from Death himself by going down to the cemetery every night for several months.
(As an aside, I find it particularly interesting that ancient entities like Death and the Devil seem to devote a lot of time to teaching the guitar to random people they meet.)
Zimmerman sort of adopted Johnson into his family and spent the next six months tutoring Johnson.
When Johnson finally returns to Robinsonville, everyone notices the marked difference in his guitar playing, including Son House.
Years later, when the rumors of Johnson's pact with the Devil had become widely circulated, Son House was interviewed by blues researchers and commented that he'd seen Johnson play before and after he disappeared.
And (likely as a joke) said it had to be the work of the Devil because no one could go from being that bad to that great so quickly. For whatever reason many people seem to view Son House’s random joke as proof a Faustian deal must have been made.
The next several years of Johnson's life were a hustle.
He knew the key to becoming famous was getting a recording contract, but in order to do that he needed to become more well-known, which meant more traveling.
But, what's a broke, traveling musician to do?
Well, if you’re curious where those womanizer rumors came from, it was because Johnson relied on his looks and his charm, and made "friends" with a few women on the way—women who were willing to give Johnson a place to stay, and more importantly, were willing to ask family and friends in other cities if Johnson could stay with them for a few days.
These friends and family would take in Johnson, and make sure he had a place to sleep and a hot meal each day, which allowed him to spend a few days promoting his upcoming shows.
You see, Johnson would show up sometime mid-week to play popular music on street corners around town to drum up excitement for his weekend shows. Then, on the weekends, Johnson would warm up crowds by playing the same popular tunes, before breaking out his music.
Though there were a few messy breakups and a second marriage to a much older woman that ended in divorce, this method worked well for Johnson and allowed him to afford to travel and play in major blues hubs.
And barely five years after he dedicated his life to becoming a traveling blues musician, it all paid off: Johnson had a record deal.
He had two recording sessions in Texas, where he laid down a total of twenty-nine tracks.
After this, Johnson did a little impromptu tour up Highway 51 with his friends Johnny Shines and Calvin Frazier. They played in Chicago, Detroit, New York, St. Louis, and Memphis, and even played a live show on the radio.
But, the fun was short-lived.
On August 13, 1938, a mere seven months after Johnson recorded the music that would forever immortalize him as one of the greatest artists of all time, he was potentially poisoned outside of a show in Greenwood, Mississippi.
Now, despite the folklore, we don't really know how Johnson died. There was never a formal autopsy, but we do have an account by one of Johnson's friends, David 'Honeyboy' Edwards, who claimed Johnson had been heavily flirting with a married woman that evening.
Edwards said the woman's husband was getting increasingly jealous and at some point the wife appeared with an open bottle of liquor and offered it to Johnson.
Edwards claimed he knocked the bottle out of Johnson's hands and yelled at him for accepting a bottle he hadn't opened himself. Johnson and Edwards fought briefly, and when the woman returned with a new bottle, Johnson ignored Edwards and drank from it.
Johnson began to feel ill that night, and his friends had to help him back to his room. He spent the next three days in extreme pain-- cramping, vomiting, and spitting up blood, before ultimately succumbing to whatever caused his illness.
It's certainly possible Johnson was poisoned as Edwards suggested, particularly since Johnson had been diagnosed with ulcers which would have made even the effects of something like naphthalene (dissolved mothballs were a popular poison of the time) more severe. But, it’s also possible there was some revisionist history on Edwards end, perhaps out of guilt or perhaps because the truth was a lot less glamorous.
However, no autopsy was performed and a formal cause of death was never listed on Johnson’s death certificate.
Nearly thirty years after his death, Gayle Dean Wardlow, a Mississippi-based musicologist, found Johnson's death certificate and attempted to do his own investigation. Wardlow supposedly found a journal entry from the plantation owner who owned the property where Johnson died and wrote that the cause of death was complications from syphilis.
I’m sort of hard-pressed to believe a plantation owner took great care to accurately document the cause of death of a Black man on his property, but what makes this claim more dubious is the fact the owner never provides the name of the man who died.
And so, with Johnson's sudden violent death, his music became popular and his life turned into folklore. A reprinting of his records in the early 60's and 90's would inspire new generations of musicians around the world and Robert Johnson would forever be immortalized.
I suppose it's easy to see why Johnson's story was conflated so intensely with rumor and folklore. He was an extraordinarily talented Black musician with a tragic past, who could never stop wandering and playing the blues, and ultimately died a strange and violent death.
And I suppose, in a way, he did sell his soul for fame--just maybe not at the crossroads. Johnson knew what it would take to pursue his dreams, and he was willing to make a Faustian bargain with himself to achieve them.
But, while a bargain with the Devil adds an air of mystery to the artist; it also diminishes the labor, both physical and emotional, that Johnson put into his craft.
Johnson was a poet who experimented with rhythm and sound in ways no one else had before, and his legacy deserves to be more than a cautionary tale about the evils of secular music.
So, here we are at last…
How exactly did Robert Johnson become synonymous with the Devil?
Well, it’s hard to talk about Johnson’s lore without at least briefly discussing the origins of the blues.
The blues are deeply rooted in West African tradition and spirituals, but only began to develop as a genre in the post-Civil War era.
The simplest way to understand the blues is to liken it to the shift that happened in American music between the “Baby Boomer” generation and their parents. The post-WW2 era was a popular period for crooners, jazz, and country, but this music fell out of popularity for “boomers”, who wanted music that more accurately reflected the reality of the political and social climate in which they were living.
Rock and Motown replaced Sinatra and Elvis on the radio, and the older generation ranted about the immorality of Motown themes and the demonic nature of rock.
(And if you were lucky enough to live in a household like mine, at least one of your grandparents continued to rail about Satan and rock well into the 2010s…)
The men of Johnson’s generation were born in a time period decades removed from the Emancipation Proclamation, but ultimately very little had changed in the South.
Slavery had ended on paper, but it merely took on new life with sharecropping. Plantation owners might have been banned from physically owning Black folks, but they could still keep them enslaved with debt.
As I mentioned previously, sharecropping was advertised as a way for formerly enslaved people to make a living farming without having to buy land or equipment. The only caveat was that, aside from having to hand over fifty percent (or more) of your yield, the system primarily operated based on a credit system.
Sharecroppers were often pushed to pay for necessities via “loans” from plantation owners, who charged exorbitant interest rates and sometimes didn’t even pay out sharecroppers in legal currency.
Basically, many of these plantations gave sharecroppers the equivalent of a Chuck E. Cheese token that could only be used at local stores owners had an agreement with, which meant that most sharecroppers were unable to afford to leave the plantations they “rented” from.
While not necessarily the same situation, blues singers around Johnson’s age who grew up in the South in the early 20th century, felt similar to teens in the 1960’s, they saw the inequity around them and wanted the music they made to reflect that reality.
The blues became an outlet to talk about the struggle to earn a living, racial oppression, addiction, and relationships outside of the spiritual sphere. It wasn’t about overcoming or feeling hopeful; it was an different outlet for expressing the pain caused by loneliness, heartache, violence, and poverty.
But, regardless of how the blues mirrored spirituals; they tended to be seen by deeply religious members of the community as “demonic”. They felt there was something innately sinful about men and women traveling around, singing about greed, addiction, and lust in places of ill repute like bars and juke joints.
So, the fact that Johnson was a blues musician at all made him seem associated with the demonic.
It also didn’t help that after his first wife, Virginia’s, death her family began to blame Johnson’s association with the blues as the cause of her death. They continued to claim for years after her passing that Johnson’s music killed Virginia, and as we discussed earlier, Robert never denied this; he leaned into it.
Similarly, rumors began to circulate about his sudden death as well as his final moments. Stories began to circulate after Johnson’s death that in his final moments, he blamed Satan and the blues for his untimely demise.
So, with all of these stories about Johnson’s connection to evil and the Devil, it was no surprise that by the time Son House was interviewed by blues researchers that they latched onto the idea that Johnson must have made a deal with the Devil.
Now, there are some who claim Johnson’s deal with Satan was mistakenly attributed to Johnson, and the original “crossroads” story belongs to a different musician named Tommy Johnson after his brother circulated the narrative in 1971 that Tommy sold his soul at a crossroads. While it is possible that Tommy and Robert’s stories intertwined at some point, it does appear that Robert Johnson’s lore was connected with the Devil narrative prior to the 70’s.
At the end of the day, Johnson’s story evolved into something between an American tall tale and a cautionary story of the evils of the blues. We can speculate on the origins of the Crossroads mythology, but we’ll never fully know the truth because we’ll never fully know who Robert Johnson was.
But, here’s what I do know:
Robert Johnson deserves to be remembered as a legend. He influenced music as we know it in such a profound way, and to say it was solely due to the intervention of a supernatural entity diminishes his contribution to music.
(But, let’s be honest if the Devil really gave us Johnson, so we could eventually have Hendrix and Zeppelin, is he that bad?)
Now, you might be wondering if the old Devil's Crossroad at the intersection of Highways 61 and 49 is still there, and while you can still visit; it's not quite the same isolated place where the Devil might hang out.
The vibes are not immaculate at The Crossroads at the intersection of Highway 49 and Highway 61, in Clarksdale, Mississippi (Photo courtesy of Mississippi Blues Travelers)
But, if you're ever at crossroads on a moonless night after the clock strikes midnight, be careful, because you know who or what you might run into.
After all, the Devil isn't the only one who likes to play games with travelers after midnight…
Well, at last we’ve made it to the end.
I hope you enjoyed our foray into the truth behind the legend of Robert Johnson.
And that's all she wrote...for now.
In these times, we all need a bit of joy, so if you enjoy this content and would like to support all the work that goes into this little folklore project, click the link below to contribute:
And if you just want to enjoy these stories, that’s okay too.
Stay cursed, friends.
Resources:
Abbay & Leatherman by The Mississippi Blues Trail
Escaping the Delta : Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues by Elijah Wald
Despite the Huge Myth, Musicians Don’t Die at 27 — They Die at 56 by Kelsey McKinney
Robert Johnson: Some Witnesses to a Short Life by Tom Freeland (Originally published in Living Blues Magazine in 2000)
Robert Johnson’s Timeline by The Robert Johnson Blues Foundation
Sharecropper Contract, 1867: A Spotlight on a Primary Source by Isham G. Bailey
“Sinners” Is a Virtuosic Fusion of Historical Realism and Horror by Richard Brody
The Myth of the 27 Club by Jack Butler
The Two Songs at the Heart of Robert Johnson’s Devil Myth by Jeff Terich
What They Sang: The Religious Roots of Spirituals and Blues by Carly Jensen
Up Jumped the Devil: The Real Life of Robert Johnson by Bruce Conforth and Gayle Dean Wardlow